John Prine has been writing about his place in the afterlife throughout his career, starting with “Please Don’t Bury Me” from 1973’s “Sweet Revenge” LP.
“That song was originally about this character I had in mind called Tom Brewster,” Prine said. “He dies but he wasn’t supposed to, like that scene in those old movies. The angels have to send him back, but they can’t the way he is. So they send him back as a rooster. Which is why his name is Brewster. I ended up trashing that whole part and came up with this idea of the guy just giving all of his organs away, and I made a whole song out of that.”
The last song on his final album, “Tree of Forgiveness,” addresses his mortality again, a subject he had to confront when he had a cancerous growth on his neck removed in 1998, after which he gave up smoking, and again when he had part of a cancerous lung removed in 2013. “I wrote that song because I figure there’s no cancer in heaven. So when I get up there, I’m going to have a cocktail and a cigarette that’s 9 miles long. That’s my idea of what heaven is like.” I hope he’s puffing on it right now.
